Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

The ever smart, witty,
and curious Klosterman (I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains
(Real and Imagined), 2013, etc.) takes on the notion that it’s “impossible
to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow.” One might
call that a “klosterism,” and the book is full of them. It’s also full of
intelligence and insights, as the author gleefully turns ideas upside down to
better understand them. Klosterman is currently obsessed with ideas that are so
accepted we dare not dispute them—e.g., gravity. Once upon a time, Aristotle
believed things didn’t float away because they were in their “natural place.”
Then Newton came along 2,000 years later and changed the way we think. Then
Einstein said gravity was really a warping of time and space. Now, scientists
are trying to “rethink gravity itself.” Therefore, the author posits, in the
future, whenever that may be, we’ll know we were wrong about whatever we
thought “gravity” was back then. In each chapter, Klosterman takes on a
different topic, applying “Klosterman’s Razor” to it: “the philosophical belief
that the best hypothesis is the one that reflexively accepts its potential
wrongness to begin with.” He seeks out a variety of experts to assist him.
George Saunders and Franz Kafka help him sort out why future literary greats
are “at the moment…either totally unknown or widely disrespected.” Physicists
Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Greene help him explore the concept of a multiverse
universe. Others assist Klosterman in taking on the future of rock ’n’ roll
(“there are still things about the Beatles that can’t be explained”), time,
dreams, democracy, TV shows (Roseanne
is an overlooked work of “genius”), and sports. Klosterman is fond of lists and
predictions. Here’s one: this book will become a popular book club selection
because it makes readers think.

Replete with lots of
nifty, whimsical footnotes, this clever, speculative book challenges our
beliefs with jocularity and perspicacity.